The corporatization of community pharmacy: implications for service provision, the public health function, and pharmacy's claims to professional status in the United Kingdom.

BACKGROUND: Pharmacy has experienced both incomplete professionalization and deprofessionalization. Since the late 1970s, a concerted attempt has been made to re-professionalize pharmacy in the United Kingdom (UK) through role extension-a key feature of which has been a drive for greater pharmacy involvement in public health. However, the continual corporatization of the UK community pharmacy sector may reduce the professional autonomy of pharmacists and may threaten to constrain attempts at reprofessionalization.

OBJECTIVES: The objectives of the research: to examine the public health activities of community pharmacists in the UK; to explore the attitudes of community pharmacists toward recent relevant UK policy and barriers to the development of their public health function; and, to investigate associations between activity, attitudes, and the type of community pharmacy worked in (eg, supermarket, chain, independent).

METHODS: A self-completion postal questionnaire was sent to a random sample of practicing community pharmacists, stratified for country and sex, within Great Britain (n=1998), with a follow-up to nonresponders 4 weeks later. Data were analyzed using SPSS (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) (v12.0). A final response rate of 51% (n=1023/1998) was achieved.

RESULTS: The level of provision of emergency hormonal contraception on a patient group direction, supervised administration of medicines, and needle-exchange schemes was lower in supermarket pharmacies than in the other types of pharmacy. Respondents believed that supermarkets and the major multiple pharmacy chains held an advantageous position in terms of attracting financing for service development despite suggesting that the premises of such pharmacies may not be the most suitable for the provision of such services.

CONCLUSIONS: A mixed market in community pharmacy may be required to maintain a comprehensive range of pharmacy-based public health services and provide maximum benefit to all patients. Longitudinal monitoring is recommended to ensure that service provision is adequate across the pharmacy network.